“Then I will signal you,” Mustafa said. “And you will kill Jinn and take over the operation as a full partner in the endeavor and the head of the Oasis consortium.”
CHAPTER 15
KURT AUSTIN WAS HEADED FOR MARCHETTI’S HIGH-TECH office atop one of Aqua-Terra’s two completed buildings. In the twenty-four hours since he and Joe had caught the seaplane, preventing Matson and Otero from escaping, much had occurred.
Back in Washington, Dirk Pitt and the NUMA brass had gone into high gear, gathering intelligence on Jinn al-Khalif.
Nigel, the pilot, had finished putting the helicopter back together and, at Marchetti’s invitation, had picked up Paul and Gamay Trout.
Marchetti himself had spent fifteen hours debugging the computer code, trying to be sure Otero had left no additional traps for them. He found none, but there were hundreds of programs running on his automated island. He insisted he couldn’t be sure that all of them were unaffected. At Kurt’s urging he’d concentrated on the more critical ones and completely deactivated the construction robots, just in case.
With a report due in from NUMA HQ, everyone was gathering in Marchetti’s office to await the transmission and discuss their next move.
Kurt opened the door and stepped inside. Joe and the Trouts were already there. Marchetti sat across from them. Leilani sat next to him.
“That’s a mighty fine brig you have down there,” Kurt said to Marchetti. “I’ve stayed in worse five-star hotels.”
Marchetti beamed. “When Aqua-Terra is ready, we expect to have millionaires and billionaires on board. If I have to put some of them in jail, I don’t want to ruin the Aqua-Terra experience for them.”
Kurt chuckled.
“Any luck getting them to talk?” Leilani as
ked.
“No, they’ve clammed up tight,” Kurt said, glancing at Joe and then turning back to Marchetti. “Don’t suppose you have a hungry python around here anywhere?”
Marchetti looked shocked by the request. “Um … no. Why?”
“Never mind.”
Kurt sat down just as the satellite feed locked in. A moment later Dirk Pitt’s rugged face appeared on the screen.
After a quick round of introductions, Pitt spoke.
“We’ve developed some information for you on this Jinn character. The bulk of the data will be sent to you in an encrypted file, but here’s the gist of what we know.
“Thirty years ago Jinn al-Khalif was a nineteen-year-old Bedouin camel herder; twenty years ago he entered the arms trade for a brief, profitable spurt, and shortly thereafter he used those funds to get a toehold in several legitimate businesses. Shipping and construction, infrastructure work. Nothing huge, but he did okay.
“Five years ago he forms a company called Oasis. It’s an oddly designed international consortium, heavy into technology and funded from murky sources. Interpol has been watching it from the get-go. Their big concern was the vast amount of money and technology flowing into Yemen without any type of control.”
“Can’t imagine Yemen is a magnet for attracting foreign capital,” Kurt said.
“Not in the least,” Pitt replied. “Because of that, Interpol thought Oasis might be a terrorist front or a money-laundering operation, but Jinn has not been political, not even within his own struggling country. And they’ve seen no transactions that would suggest laundering. It seems the technology transfers and the high-tech investments were legitimate.”
Pitt tapped something on the keyboard in front of him. A satellite photo came up, showing the stark beauty of Yemen’s northern desert region. The display sharpened and zoomed in as if they were dropping in from space. When the resolution locked, it was focused on a rocky outcropping that jutted above the sand and cast a long shadow. It reminded Kurt of Shiprock, New Mexico.
Leading up to the outcropping, and stretching out behind it, were vehicle tracks and swaths of discolored sand.
“What are we looking at?” Kurt asked.
“Our intelligence agencies have tracked some of Jinn’s activities to this area of the desert.”
“It doesn’t look like much,” Paul noted.
“It’s not supposed to,” Dirk replied. “See all that darker sand and soil? It’s spread out over a hundred acres.”
“It looks like it’s been washed down from somewhere,” Gamay said. “Erosion or flash flooding.”